


Snapshots

by Ashkaztra



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-05-04 12:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 13,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14593455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashkaztra/pseuds/Ashkaztra
Summary: A collection of short ficlets, scenes, and other assorted writings not long or coherent enough for their own story.Gathered here whenever I have a few to throw in.





	1. Chapter 1

Most of the time, John had an excellent attention span. He had to, because getting distracted mid-mission could be catastrophic. Getting distracted mid-flight definitely could be. But outside of missions, outside of anything but a day too quiet and lazy to deal well with, it was an entirely different story. He might like to claim he was naturally lazy, but doing something he wanted to do and doing nothing at all was two very different things. The rest of his team were off doing things with their significant others, and John had nothing much to do except sit around and feel his mind drift. In an effort to distract himself from the boredom he’d taken to Wraith-sitting, because in general, Wraith were at least not boring.

At least not normally, but Todd apparently hadn’t gotten that message, because he was prodding old Ancient books – Ancient both in origin and in age – with the sort of expression John was pretty sure he had that one time he broke his leg falling off a horse as a kid and spent weeks reading the housekeeper’s stash of romance novels in a desperate attempt to stave off the boredom. John didn’t think the books are Ancient romance novels, though who knew?

Todd, apparently.

John hadn’t even realised the Ancients had books, given how high-tech they were about everything, but he supposed there’s nothing quite like the feeling of turning pages, even when you have fancy technology. Even when those pages were bodice rippers. He’d never realised just how much sex there was in the romance novels until that summer. It had been an interesting discovery, as a teenage boy, reading those scenes. He’d spent a lot of time torn between laughter at some of the euphemisms and a budding realization that the scenes were written from a woman’s point of view, focusing on making the men sound attractive, and that it had worked better on him than he wanted to admit.

It had made for an interesting time.

Unlike his current situation, which was not very interesting. In itself, that was strange. He had to wonder when being in the same room as an ancient – not Ancient – alien had become commonplace enough to be – Well, not boring in itself, but not interesting enough to counteract the boredom, either.

The most interesting thing Todd was doing was the fact that he was sitting on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the wall. There were perfectly good chairs in the room, but John wasn’t about to question that. Getting information from Todd was always a case of either or, depending on his goodwill at the time. John was not about to waste potential information gain on something as unimportant as “why are you on the floor?”. Besides, he didn’t particularly care why Todd was on the floor. It was probably some weird Wraith thing.

Or possibly a weird Todd thing. The two overlapped occasionally, but not always. Todd was both a weird Wraith and weird for a Wraith, which made it hard to tell what was just general Wraith weirdness and what was Todd being Todd.

Not that it particularly mattered. John generally didn’t waste his energy on either unless they were an active threat to Atlantis, and the fact that Todd apparently preferred sitting on the floor rather than a chair was hardly a security matter. It wasn’t really a matter at all, and on most days, John wouldn’t have dwelled on it, but on most days, he had better things to do.

Not so much today.

Then again, he had nothing worse to do, either, than just curling up in a chair dragged in front of one of the massive windows, soaking up the sun while watching Todd prod books around with an expression of amused disdain, the silence between them amiable rather than one wrought by tension or aggression.

Honestly, there were worse ways to spend an afternoon.


	2. Chapter 2

This is how it starts.

There is a mission, and like their missions tend to, it all goes to hell at the same time. There is a village under attack, there is a malfunctioning Ancient device, there is Bola Kai, and there is a Wraith.

At the moment, the Wraith is the least concern. John has no idea what Todd is doing there, but when they met, he seemed genuinely surprised to see them, so John is giving him the benefit of the doubt for now. Whatever Todd’s game is, and there is always a game with him, it has nothing to do with the Bola Kai or the village. It might have to do with the Ancient device, but if it does, blaming him for being drawn there by it would be hypocritical.

After all, the device is what brought them, too.

It doesn’t appear to be what brought the Bola Kai. That seems to be a case of good old-fashioned bad luck, as it’s hard enough to deal with malfunctioning Ancient devices normally. It’s a lot harder when the villagers who were at least marginally helpful and friendly are being attacked by gate-travelling nomadic cannibals. Leaving them to it is not an option, but the Bola Kai outnumber them by a lot, and unlike most factions, they aren’t even phased by the presence of a Wraith. In fact, it seems to only make them more aggressive.

“They believe consuming Wraith flesh will give them some of our strength and power,” Todd informs him, as the press into their hiding place, watching and waiting for the right moment to strike. Teyla and Ronon are doing the same from the other direction, and Rodney is locked in the Ancient outpost, trying to turn the device off before something catastrophic happens.

“Does it?” John asks, trying his best to be as flat as he can possibly manage. The Bola Kai rival Ronon when it comes to tracking.

Shaking his head, in a gesture that is so human it has to be deliberate, Todd looks over John’s head, his heat sensors tracking their enemies where vision alone doesn’t suffice. “Wraith flesh has no particular effects,” he says, voice low. “But it can be removed from the source without killing them.”

Healing over and over as they remove flesh to be devoured, like Prometheus and the eagle. John shudders, and Todd makes a small noise in agreement. Wraith are cannibalistic themselves, when the situation calls for it, but there is a difference between draining life force and holding a living being captive, feeding of their flesh as they healed over and over.

John remembers the Wraith Ford and his people had kept chained up in their cave. With their captors gone, had they died there, slowly starving to death?


	3. Chapter 3

Walking around a hive ship with nothing to fear was an odd feeling.

Hitching a ride from Todd had seemed a natural idea. The Wraith already knew the location of Atlantis, and considering John had been stuck on a planet with only a space gate, his only other choice had been to wait around until one of the Earth ships came to Pegasus again, which could be a long time. Todd was around, and he happened to have a fully functional spaceship at his disposal. Admittedly, said spaceship was full of Wraith, but generally, Todd’s hive were fairly good at just ignoring John’s existence.

He’d been deposited in a spare room probably meant for human worshippers and told not to fall into the engine, but aside from that, he had been largely left alone. With Todd busy doing whatever it was he did when he wasn’t playing games with Atlantis — presumably playing games with other Wraith instead — John had taken to wandering the ship. Nobody had said he couldn’t, and he couldn’t deny a certain curiosity about hive ships that he’d never really had a chance to play with, since he was usually busy trying not to die whenever he was on one of them.

As unsettling as it was to think about the way hive ships were created, there was something endlessly fascinating about the way he could feel the ship pulse and move, obviously alive. Atlantis felt almost alive, but it was in a very clinical, very mechanic way. Todd’s hive ship felt organic, like a living, breathing creature.

John had to wonder how much sentience hive ships actually had, if the ship could feel him walk around and occasionally pause to touch a panel and marvel at the warmth under his hand, or the way he could feel it move like it was breathing. So strange.

The hallways moved in ways most spaceship corridors wouldn’t, making it obvious that these weren’t as much built as they were grown, and not all of them led where logic said they should lead. Sometimes they did, sometimes they led somewhere else entirely.

Sometimes, he walked around the corner and found himself staring in awe as he found himself in an open area facing a massive window, a panoramic view of the stars sprawled out in front of him.

As a child, John had laid on his back on the stable roof, watching the stars and vowing that one day, he would fly as close to them as he could. Standing here, with space surrounding the ship he was on every side. Like he could almost reach out and touch the stars. It was absolutely beautiful.

Whatever the open area was used for, it was clearly meant for recreation, and there were strange chairs hanging from the ceiling. To John’s surprise, and to his delight, the seats could be pulled around, moving within the chamber on a network of veins in the ceiling. He pulled one of them over as close to the window he could get it and climbed into the seat, leaning back to watch the stars go by. Even out of hyperspace, the ship was obviously going fast, and John had no idea where they were in the galaxy, so he couldn’t recognize a single star, but it looked pretty.


	4. Chapter 4

By all expectations, a Wraith in a t-shirt should look kind of ridiculous. It wasn’t even a good t-shirt, just one of John’s old, faded ones that he’d lent Todd while they waited for the Wraith’s clothing to dry from their rainy mission. Somehow, Todd didn’t look all that silly, everything considered. He looked a little bedraggled, mostly because his hair was still wet and tangled, but mostly, he looked — well, casual. Normally, Wraith looked so foreboding in their stiff coats and predatory grace, but at the moment, Todd looked oddly relaxed. He still looked intrinsically Wraith, even more so than normal, with much more of his skin showing than he usually had, but he looked peaceful. The t-shirt had been black once, but it had washed out to a soft charcoal. It was one of those soft t-shirts that was worn sort of thin, and despite the difference in their heights, it fit Todd pretty well.

At least as long as he didn’t stretch too much; Todd had a longer torso than John did, which mean that whenever he stretched, which Wraith seemed to do as gleefully as cats did, it revealed a lot of green skin all of a sudden, with strange markings inked onto it. Which, in turn, meant that whenever Todd stretched, John found himself staring at that revealed skin in fascination. Especially when he curved his back in that way that showed off not just his skin but the strange bone spurs along his spine.

Thankfully, Todd didn’t seem to notice how often John’s eyes strayed, because there were certain things he really didn’t want to have to explain.

“I kind of want to lick your spine” was very high up on that list.

He did, though, or at least wanted to touch it, to see what the bone felt like and how the skin around it felt. It looked as though the vertebrae were growing partially through the skin, perhaps a result of the thicker, denser bones that Wraith had, which couldn’t be pleasant. Not if it was something they grew into, at least.

The only young Wraith John had ever run into was Ellia, who was already of feeding age. If she’d had a spine like that, it wasn’t something that had come up, but even if it had, she would have been old enough that her body had begun altering.

And here he’d thought human puberty was kind of terrifying. From what he knew of Wraith puberty, what with the going from solid food to feeding on life force, it had to be some transitional period.

He wondered what Todd had been like as a teenager. The Wraith was so endlessly old it was hard to imagine that he’d ever been young, and considering he’d been the same as he was now, more or less, when John had been a toddler, it was not something that he could easily wrap his head around.

“How do you do it?” He found himself asking, looking at Todd again and for once, not looking for glimpses of skin and spine sticking out under the too short hem of the shirt.

“Do what in particular?” Todd asked, looking back at him, his eyes gleaming oddly in the light. Wraith eyes reflected light like cat eyes, but in the right light, with the angle just in position, they looked as though they glowed on their own.

“Live,” John told him. “For centuries. For millennia. I can’t — I can’t even wrap my head around the idea of living that long. My grandma, my mother’s mother, lived until she was a hundred and one, which is pretty damn impressive for a human, and I remember looking at her and thinking she seemed to have lived forever.” She had been a tiny little thing at the time of her death, crooked and shrunken with age, but her eyes had been alive with a century of experiences.

“And then there’s you,” he continued, gesturing vaguely at Todd. “And you’re so old I can’t even comprehend it. I’m good with numbers, but age seems so — so exponential. A hundred years is already so hard to imagine. A thousand? I don’t think my brain can comprehend that kind of lifetime of experiences. And ten thousand? Ten thousand and whatever, and you’re sitting across from me, wearing a silly t-shirt and looking so damn normal. But you’re not, and there’s nothing normal about any of this, and I’m not sure my brain can deal with this.”


	5. Chapter 5

When Todd had asked to be able to use the training room for those of his hive on Atlantis, John had signed off on it without too much thought. Nothing about it should pose any danger to Atlantis, and he could easily see why it was needed. Wraith were surprisingly active creatures, for a species which could sleep for such long periods. Most of the Wraith currently on Atlantis were younger, as far as he could tell, and seemed to buzz with energy sometimes, so it made sense that Todd would look for a way that could sap some of that energy. Going running like many of the Expedition did wasn’t really an option, since the Wraith were always to be under guard. Sparring sessions in the training room was a lot easier to guard.

Apparently, the Wraith didn’t mind an audience, so there were a lot of people there, John himself included, watching in fascination.

They had fought against the Wraith for years, but John didn’t think he’d ever seen Wraith fight each other. Even in a friendly sparring fight like this, it was obvious just how strong they actually were.

The two current fighters were, as far as John could tell, very evenly matched, both in strength and in experience. Both were scientists, not warriors, and on the younger side of Wraith, which apparently meant “not yet a thousand”. He tried not thinking too much about that. One of them, an engineer who worked mostly with Zelenka’s group, was slightly shorter, but stockier built than his taller, slimmer opponent. They’d been sparring for over fifteen minutes straight and neither showed any sign of flagging.

Seated near John, Todd looked entirely amused at the whole thing.

“How long does Wraith sparring matches usually last?” John asked, looking over at Todd.

“As long as they last,” Todd informed him, as helpful as ever.

The scientist at his side, the oddly pretty bioengineer who had been working with Carson and Keller on a potential way to use Wraith enzyme to safely boost healing, chuckled. “What the Commander means to say is that they last until one side comes out the victor. As evenly matched as those two are, that will take a long time.”

All the better to sap that excessive energy, John supposed, and looked at the two Wraith seated near him. Both had shed their long coats, like the pair fighting had, and the scientist had his long hair pulled into a strange French braid-like solution that left the braid raised. They looked a different kind of dangerous than normal, more of a danger potential than an active threat.

“You chose the most evenly matched for sparring partners, then?” John asked. That did make sense. John tried to do that himself when he set up training sessions.

“We were quite lucky in that those two are very well matched,” Todd agreed. “It would not be fair to set them up against myself or my wit primary. I am far more experienced, and a trained warrior where they are scientists. As for him;” He indicated the scientist at his side. “He cheats.”

The scientist simply chuckled.


	6. Chapter 6

The first time he actually touches Todd on his own volition, it’s an accident.

They’ve just finished a pretty complicated manoeuvre of the kind only a very tricky Wraith could come up with, and it works perfectly, setting off a chain of stun grenade pulses that spread out around them like a ring of blue light and unconscious people. It’s a beautiful kind of complex, yet simple design.

Caught up in the adrenaline rush, John finds himself giving Todd a light, celebratory slap on the shoulder, the way he would with Ronon, only to remember that though they are the same height, Todd and Ronon are nothing alike, and there’s always been an unspoken “don’t touch the Wraith!” rule.

Todd doesn’t actually seem to care, though, giving no response one way or another. He doesn’t really seem to notice, though John doubts that, because it’s Todd and he pays attention to everything around him. He is decidedly creepy like that. Though to be fair, John is pretty sure Todd fosters the creepy image more than what is necessarily true, for whatever reason. Probably because it amuses him.

John stays away from Todd the rest of the mission because he feels a bit awkward somehow, and he shouldn’t be touching Wraith anyway. Even if they don’t seem to mind.

Except that it seems to have opened a floodgate, somehow, because he finds himself doing it anyway, and as it turns out, Todd really doesn’t mind. It doesn’t even seem to occur to him that he should mind, which makes sense, because Wraith have no concept of personal space. It’s not that much of a surprise – after all, Wraith have the whole hivemind thing going on, which has to be a lot more intimate than just a casual touch. John has to wonder what it feels like to have other people in your head like that, but he doesn’t think he’d enjoy it.

He does enjoy the touching, though, and that should probably worry him a bit.

It’s pretty much harmless, though. The Wraith are aliens, and as scary as they are, there is a kind of boyish glee in being close enough to a living, breathing alien to actually touch them. So that he can just lean against Todd and sigh because he’s tired and his head hurts, or grab his arm to drag him along – It feels a little like the kind of thing he’d dreamed about as a kid.

Even though the aliens he imagined as a boy were significantly less scary than the Wraith.

Not that he is scared of Todd, exactly. It’s more like dealing with a dangerous animal, a tiger or a venomous snake. Todd is certainly dangerous, but being dangerous doesn’t mean he is necessarily going to act on it. John is dangerous. Teyla is dangerous, and Ronon, and Rodney. There isn’t a single person in the expedition who isn’t.

Intimidating, though? Yeah, John will give him that.

Even when he allows John to drag him around or leans back into him, or in one memorable – and drunken – incident, when he sits patiently at John’s feet while John braids his hair and pins it up on his head like he’s some kind of milkmaid. Even like that, he manages to look intimidating as hell.

Or, when John has gotten used to just grabbing him by the arm and dragging him along, and grabs his hand to get his attention. He gets it, as Todd pulls his hand away, baring his teeth and growling.

He’s still not scared, but John staggers back anyway, because there is not scared and then there is stupid.

And apparently, there’s touching and then there is _touching_ , and that does make sense, because the one part of a Wraith that could be called vulnerable by any means is the feeding hand. So John apologizes, amends the rule in his head – it has gone from “don’t touch the Wraith” to “touch the Wraith at your own risk” before – to “just don’t touch the damn feeding hand” because Todd has a lot of teeth and they’re very, very sharp, and John would prefer not having them bared at him like that.


	7. Chapter 7

John didn’t consider himself an inherently violent person. He had few qualms about killing people if necessary, but he would honestly prefer not having to make that choice in the first place.

Sometimes, though, it was unavoidable.

Like when someone who fancied himself an intergalactic warlord decided to go after his team. It wasn’t even in response to anything they’d done, they’d met up on an uninhabited planet on accident when the warlord had recognised them and decided to make a name for himself taking down the infamous Lanteans.

The man himself was unimpressive, but he had a lot of men with him, enough to subdue them despite the fact that they had a Wraith on their side.

That was why they were on the planet - they were exchanging information with Todd - and it would normally make people stay away. The warlord was enough of a fool to think that only made for a better challenge.

He almost got away with it, too. He had enough men to take them down through sheer numbers.

Unfortunately, he made one big mistake. He wanted to make the others lose their morale so he’d had some of his men hold John in place so he could stab him.

He should have made sure John was dead before throwing him in a ditch and taking the others off to his camp.

The injury hurt, but not enough to keep John from going after him; and definitely not enough to keep him from taking out everyone that stood in his way. He simply had to use the surroundings to his advantage, switching to stealthier tactics as he separated the men slowly, taking them out one by one.

By the time he reached the warlord, most of the men were dead. Only a couple remained, guarding their leader.

The warlord had caged the others in individual cages, except for Todd. The Wraith had clearly been deemed the larger threat, because they had somehow nailed him to a tree. He looked understandably pissed about it as John dropped out of his tree perch and shot two of the remaining guards before going after the rest.

All of his team had visible injuries, though he didn’t think they were seriously hurt. It didn’t matter. The warlord had dared threaten his friends - his team - and injured his Wraith ally. That was not acceptable.

John didn’t particularly enjoy violence, but he didn’t feel any remorse as he pulled his handgun from where he’d kept it behind his back - making sure his opponents focused on the P-90, and shot the warlord in the head.

He went for his team first, breaking the locks on their cages and letting them out, taking the time to make sure they weren’t seriously injured. Ronon had the worst of it, as the men had pegged him as the biggest threat of the three, but it was just superficial cuts and bruises. Teyla and Rodney had come off even better, mostly just some bruises.

Once John was satisfied that they were doing alright, he turned his attention to Todd.

The Wraith looked fine, for someone nailed to a tree with what appeared to be giant iron staples. He certainly didn’t seem concerned with that; his eyes had been on John the entire time and they were almost glowing, the pupils unusually wide. Perhaps they had hit his head, John supposed, but there was something strangely intense about the way he watched John, even now.

He was probably just hungry. It was obvious from the healing that he hadn’t fed in a while, or he probably wouldn’t have gotten nailed to that tree in the first place. He probably still had some instinctual associations between John and feeding.

Not that John was about to let him snack on him — Todd was there because he had asked him to come, which made the Wraith his responsibility, and John took his responsibilities seriously. That didn’t mean offering himself up as Wraith food.

Todd kept watching him, however, eyes uncharacteristically dark, and under that unblinking stare, John felt somewhat naked. He found a crowbar and managed to pull the staples free, one at the time, his fingers stained dark by the Wraith’s blood. Todd’s eyes didn’t leave him for a moment, and there was a strange smile on his face.

Glaring up at the now un-tree’d Wraith, John reminded him sharply that he was an occasional ally, not his dinner, and stomped off to join Rodney, who was waiting for him by the path to the gate. Both Teyla and Ronon were giving Todd strange looks, but that was nothing new, even if this particular look seemed more surprised than hostile, so John left them to it and began the trek back towards the gate.

The others fell in around him, with Todd following behind like a weird sort of shadow, watching John the entire way back to the gate. Occasionally, Teyla and Ronon would look at John, then at Todd, and then at each other. Ronon looked so put out by whatever it was that he forgot to glare balefully at Todd at every available occasion.

Rodney kept glancing at the rest of their team, and then at Todd, frowning.

John had no idea why they were so surprised. They were usually the first ones to tell him that Todd probably thought of him more like packed lunch than as an ally.

He wasn’t normally quite so obvious about it, of course, but he had just been nailed to a tree. Some weirdness had to be permitted after that.

Shaking his head a little, John kept walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John in his "will kill to defend my people" mode is hot as hell. Todd agrees.


	8. Chapter 8

In retrospect, asking Todd to spar with him had probably been a terrible idea.

The galaxy had been remarkably peaceful lately, and John was happy about that, but it left him with very little to do. At first, he’d set out to tackle his paperwork, but that hadn’t taken nearly as much time as he’d thought. Downtime was a good time to hang out with his team, but they all had their own lives, so sometimes, he was the only one around, and had no idea what to do with himself.

Maybe he should get some more hobbies. He’d used to be good at entertaining himself, but he’d gotten used to being part of a team, a part of a whole. Also, he was out of audiobooks and the jumpers were grounded for maintenance.

So he’d taken to prodding the Wraith. Todd was on Atlantis to assist with some translation work, considering he was not only fluent in Ancient, he was also much more aware of how the Ancients worked than most. Because he wanted the information he was working on himself, he was willing to help, and because it was nothing that directly threatened Atlantis and freed their scientists up to do something else, they were happy to let him.

Even Wraith needed to get some exercise, though, so John decided to drag him down to the gym with him, just to get a distraction from things.

He didn’t do well with idleness.

That probably explained why he found himself asking Todd to fight him.

As far as bad ideas went, it was far from his worst. Todd was much stronger than he was, of course, and a better hand-to-hand fighter, considering John’s weapon of choice was a gun while Todd liked knives, but he was good at adapting his strength to John’s level, never hitting him harder than Ronon and Teyla sometimes did. They’d started out using bantos rods, but both of them had lost them somewhere along the line, and were fighting bare-handed.

The problem wasn’t Wraith strength. It was Wraith endurance. They’d been sparring for a while, and John could feel himself flagging. Todd didn’t seem to even notice any strain, moving with the same predatory grace as he always did.

As far as John knew, Todd didn’t normally get into fights unless he had to. He much preferred working from behind the scenes, manipulating things so he didn’t have to fight himself. Sparring with him, though, it was evident that it was simply personal preference that kept him behind the lines. Todd was a good fighter, agile and strong, and clearly analyzing every move John was making as they sparred. He’d discarded his coat before they’d begun, which let John see the way he moved, and it was obvious that muscle memory was a large part of it.

John was completely outclassed, and he knew it.

Exhaustion and outclassing aside, though, he was having fun. The fact that Todd was so good at reading him and his moves meant he had to be on his toes at all times, and he didn’t really need to worry about hitting him back. In a hand to hand fight, or foot to foot as might be the case, he had no chance of doing much damage to a well-fed Wraith. Any damage he might do wouldn’t last long.

Watching Todd move was almost a bit hypnotic. There was something serpentine about the way he moved his body, and he was a lot harder to read than John clearly was to him.

And he moved really fast when he wanted to.

One moment, John was facing him on the mat, the next he was lying on his back, pinned to the floor with Todd’s arm across his collarbone.

“You were distracted, Sheppard,” Todd stated, voice low and amused.

Trying to come up with a response was harder than it should have been. John was suddenly hyper-aware of Todd’s presence, the weight of his body and the way he was effortlessly pinning him. The Wraith had been considerate enough to use his arm, not his feeding hand, but it might as well have been a steel beam for all John was concerned.

He was completely immobilized by Todd’s weight on him, pinned to the mat like that.

It should be terrifying, having a Wraith looming above him, even a non-hostile and honestly rather playful Wraith.

Terrified was not what John was feeling.

Suddenly and very inconveniently aroused, on the other hand, was high on the list.

He liked giving up control to lovers, had always done, but he’d never even considered that he could get the same reaction from sparring. Ronon and Teyla pinned him quite often, but neither of them had ever caused him to respond like that before.

Then again, he thought of Ronon and Teyla like family.

Todd was definitely not family. He wasn’t even sure what the Wraith was to him, but it was something completely different than his team was.


	9. Chapter 9

It was really strange, seeing Todd out of his coat and gear. Normally, he wore the long sweeping thing at all times, to the point that John had pretty much begun to think of the coat as part of him. He’d removed it for their movie night, though, which made sense. It couldn’t be too comfortable to sit around in for a long time.

Underneath it, he wore a soft-looking shirt with a high collar and some embroidery details on the sides and around the neck that looked almost scale-like. Unlike the coat, it looked very comfortable. To John, it looked a dark grey, but he suspected it was probably far more interesting looking to a Wraith. It seemed almost a bit shimmery, and John kind of wanted to reach out and touch it.

Out of the coat, Todd looked a lot more approachable. He still retained some air of intimidation, simply because he was a Wraith, but for a Wraith, especially a Wraith Commander, he looked downright casual. He was sprawled in one of the large armchairs with a bowl of dried fruit John had got him, since he seemed to like fruit quite a bit.

Admittedly, the extreme chewiness of it was half the fun. Todd’s teeth were not made for chewing, which made him eat almost daintily. It was kind of hilarious. Big, scary space vampire, and he was nibbling at the food like a curious cat.

Actually, Wraith were pretty cat-like in general. Watching the way Todd was stretched out, back slightly arched like his spine wasn’t a problem, that seemed like a good comparison. It wasn’t that John couldn’t move like that, he definitely could. He’d be hurting after a while, though, which Todd didn’t seem to suffer from. Admittedly, Wraith felt less surface pain than humans did, with fewer nerve endings in the skin layers, but they did feel muscle pain.

Just not from moving in odd directions, apparently.

They’d started these movie nights while Atlantis was still on Earth; John attempting to distract Todd from the hunger and uncertainty by giving him something else to focus on. A bored Wraith was dangerous. A bored, starving and unhappy Wraith was even more so.

Once back in Pegasus, the movie nights had tapered off due to less proximity, but they had kept it going whenever Todd was on Atlantis.

For all that he’d started it to keep Todd out of trouble, and to keep Atlantis out of the sort of trouble Todd could cause, he actually did enjoy watching movies with Todd. The Wraith’s dry sense of humor combined with unfamiliarity with Earth culture and society made for a lot of both hilarious and interesting observations. Todd had a very analytical mind, but he also had a lot of natural curiosity, and the combination made him a really fun partner in movie watching, whether watching an actually good movie or something that was so hilariously bad it was worth watching anyway.

They had been doing the movie thing for a good while.

The casualness of the setting was new, though. Todd’s coat was tossed over the back of a nearby chair, along with the bracers and everything else he normally wore. John had discarded a lot of the things he normally wore, too, including any weapons and even his earpiece. It had seemed natural at the time, but now John couldn’t stop thinking about it.


	10. Chapter 10

They’d been waiting for him when he crossed the free lands, out of the safety of Atlantis’ shadow. Several heavily armed men, with stun lances to take him down and fast horses to move him before he woke, so that when he did, he had no idea where he might be, only that it was far from home and in the hands of someone capable, a terrifying prospect in itself.

It wasn’t like he was unaccustomed to being held against his will, as such. He was a Descendant, after all, and they were all valuable targets for the less scrupulous. John didn’t think the people who held him even knew who he was, though, because they hadn’t taken him for his bloodline or his family, which was just as well since his father would sooner cut off his hand than pay ransom for his wayward son. They’d taken him because he was of Atlantis, part of Lady Elizabeth’s court.

Though if his captors thought Elizabeth an easy mark for extortion, hostage or not, they were sorely mistaken. She was a diplomat, true, and preferred going for the peaceful solution if she could, but that didn’t mean she would fold that easily.

As far as Atlantis was concerned, John was just a military commander, one of several, and compromising the city’s safety to ensure one man’s safety was against everything that the council of Atlantis stood for. Especially since he hadn’t told them about his bloodline, about his heritage, because he didn’t want to be more than just another military commander. He’d worked himself up to where he was, which was where he wanted to be. Out there, helping people instead of hiding away in a fortress because his ancestor had bred into the higher plane. As a Descendant, there might be people even in Atlantis who would argue for paying ransom for him, but as John Sheppard of the First Lantean Reconnaissance Division, he was just an officer. If he were to die in enemy hands, it would be unfortunate, but he wasn’t irreplaceable, and he was glad he wasn’t.

Whoever had captured him and locked him up would get nothing from Atlantis except a formal refusal.

Which only mean that in John’s current situation, he’d have to get himself out of the mess himself.

The cell they kept him in was deep underground, carved into the stone itself, probably a long time ago, before Atlantis had awoken and the lands had been at full war which each other. The stories claimed that hungry ghosts had roamed the land and drained the souls of the living; someone creating an underground warren of tunnels and chambers was decidedly plausible in comparison. It was a pretty small cell, the walls maybe twelve feet each, but it was clean and dry, and really not that bad for a cell. He’d been in worse. Three of the walls were stone, but the fourth, with the door, was all metal bars set into the stone of the ceiling and floor, with gaps between each bar wide enough to fit most of his arm, but far too narrow to fit more than that.

Unfortunately, being a Descendant didn’t mean he had the mythical ability to turn into light, like the Ascended were said to be able to.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been locked up, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, either. Being deep underground was a new touch, and one that complicated matters somewhat, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t overcome given a bit of time and some clever thinking. It’d take some time for the ransom demand to reach Atlantis, and then some more before the answer came back, and whoever his captors were would probably try sending back a message with all the horrible things they’d do to John if the payment wasn’t made, which should give him the time he needed.

Hopefully, he’d be able to think of something clever before then.

John wasn’t sure why the Genii seemed to expect him to gasp in horror and proclaim his disbelief at the fact that his kidnapping was their work. It was pretty much exactly the kind of action he’d have expected them to be behind. Underhanded tactics and underground prisons seemed very much the essence of Genii society. There was a reason why Lady Elizabeth largely refused to work with them unless there was no choice, although the newest insurgent to take the crown of the Genii had seemed a step above the rest when it came to his dealings with Atlantis.

Apparently not, since John was currently locked in a Genii cell, deep below the surface where the seers of Atlantis couldn’t find him. He hadn’t missed that the rock held protective runes. He might not have any talent in the magical arts himself, but he did see runes, the only useful thing his bloodline had ever granted him. If Teyla had been there, she could have told him what they meant, but she wasn’t, and though he could see them, he couldn’t read them.

There was a lot of rune nodes, though, far more than should be necessary to hold a single Lantean officer. Especially one whose skill set didn’t include any of the magical arts. He was dangerous, certainly, but not that dangerous, and it made him suspect that these cells were made to hold something much more dangerous than he was. Kolya was a lot of things, but a fool was not one of them. He wouldn’t waste valuable resources on John, where they weren’t needed, and the nodes were too fresh to be remnants from whenever the cells had been first carved.

It was a convenient place to hold a hostage, certainly, but the more John thought about it, the more certain he became that there was something else there. Something significantly more dangerous than he was, strong enough to require heavy runes to hold it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing fantasy stuff. This is one I really hope to come back to, eventually. I have plot plans for it.


	11. Chapter 11

“So, apparently we’re here for a while,” John mused, looking over at Todd.

The Wraith tilted his head and looked past John, out the window. Outside, there was only space, space and the star that caused their problems. “So it seems,” he agreed. He didn’t seem that bothered by it, but then, time was probably a lot less of a concern to an immortal.

It wasn’t that much of a concern to John, either, truthfully. He had food and water, and the facility had life support. They couldn’t leave until the proton storm died down, which could take a while, but they were in a shielded, protected structure.

The only real danger they faced was boredom.

“I need to start bringing a pack of cards in my bag,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I could teach you Go Fish, or something.”

Not that playing games with a telepathic alien would leave him with much of a chance of winning, but they’d probably stay entertained for a while.

Todd chuckled, making that low trilling sound he always did when John said something he found amusing.

As places to be stuck went, this was really not a bad one. They had come to the satellite to see if it was similar to the lagrangian point one that they had once used against the Wraith, and John had brought Todd to pick his brains about it. Whatever this satellite was for, however, it was in no way a weapons platform. Todd suggested it was an observation post, which sounded likely. It was in the middle of a set of binary stars that seemed to have an unusually high level of activity.

John looked at the star visible through the window. The other one was behind the satellite, not visible on this side. “You think these stars are preparing to go supernova?” He asked, genuinely curious. It wasn’t something he knew a lot about, outside what he’d learned as a kid, and a lot of that was no longer valid. The number of moons around Saturn alone proved that. He remembered when Voyager 2 had confirmed three new ones.

He shared a last name with one of the astronomers who had discovered a lot of the moons of the solar system. He doubted they were related, though.

Following John’s gaze out the window, Todd made a thoughtful noise. “The larger of the two have entered its last stage, and will grow much bigger over time. It has done so since before the Lanteans left. In time, the gas will spill over to its twin and it will spend its energy and leave its dense core behind. The second star will have entered its last stages by then, and once that starts spilling its gas, the core remnant may very well go supernova. There is a high likelihood it will.”

He watched the star for a moment.

“However, considering the growth rate it has showed so far, it may a very long time yet.”

“I suppose you might live to see it,” John said, looking over at Todd. He never quite knew how to deal with the fact that Todd was effectively immortal.

Meeting his eyes, Todd gave a small nod. “It is not impossible,” he admitted. “Unlikely, perhaps, but theoretically possible.”

“I wonder if you’ll remember this conversation when it happens,” John mused, looking out the window again. The stars sometimes seemed more approachable than Todd did.

“Sheppard,” Todd said, and for once there was none of the teasing tone to it. “I rarely forget anything you have said.”


	12. Chapter 12

Waking up in a dark place without awareness of how he’d gotten there was never something John enjoyed.

Waking up in a dark place with his head in a Wraith’s lap was so far out of his reference values that he had no idea how to deal with it.

“You are awake,” Todd said, sounding pleased, and dabbed at John’s head with something wet and cool. “You hit your head as the ship went down. There is a lot of blood.”

John winced, and stayed where he was. Weird as it was to have his head in Todd’s lap, it wasn’t unpleasant, and whatever he was cleaning his blood away with, it felt sort of soothing. “Yeah, head injuries bleed a lot, even when they’re not serious. I don’t feel concussed, so I guess I’m fine. Just a bit sore.”

He frowned. “And also kind of blind. It’s really dark in here.”

“It is,” Todd agreed, apparently satisfied that he had removed whatever blood had been on John’s face, because he removed the wet cloth. “I can see a little, but even Wraith require some light to see.”

“You have that freaky heat vision, though,” John noted. “Does that require light?”

Todd chuckled. “Not light, no,” he said. “But it depends on temperature differences. I can track you with it, certainly, and I can probably find the engine as long as it has not cooled down yet, but it will not help me find doors. Or walls.”

The mental image of Todd walking into a wall was pretty hilarious, and John chuckled to himself as he slowly eased himself up into a sitting position. It really was dark in there. He could just barely make out the closest outlines.

“Let me guess,” he said, looking in Todd’s direction. “The communications are out?”

“Communications, engine power and lights are all powered down,” Todd agreed. “It appears life support has a separate power source, so we will not suffocate.”

Just potentially starve. Great. At least without food and water, John was likely to die before Todd reached the point of eating him, so he supposed that was a small comfort. He’d really rather not ever feel that pain again.

“How well do you know this class of ship?” John asked, stretching.

He didn’t think that he had seriously hurt anything in the crash, but he felt like someone had put him in a box and shook it. It shouldn’t slow him down too much, at least. He was pretty used to working through this level of pain, and he wasn’t about to give up and die yet. The ship had crashed, yes, though he’d managed to land it mostly without catastrophic failure. There should be something left of the engine room, something that could be used to some effect.

Todd might not be Rodney, but the Wraith was every bit as used to dealing with Ancient technology. If they could get to the engine room, they might be able to get basic communications online, at least.

There was a rustle letting him know Todd had moved, probably to get to his feet. “This ship is a non-standard build, but it appears to use a scout frame. I believe I can find the engine room from here without too much difficulty.”

Sometimes, John didn’t know if he found the whole mind-reading thing annoying or convenient. At the moment, he was going to go with the latter option.

Getting to his feet slowly, John looked around. Still pitch black.

“We’re going to need to find some sort of portable light source first,” he said. “I will definitely walk into a wall like this.”

“Or fall in a hole,” Todd agreed, sounding far too amused at that. “I may be able to provide a light for us, but it may not be the most pleasant of experiences.”

“This is already a pretty unpleasant experience,” John muttered, scowling in Todd’s general direction. “Can’t get that much worse.”

There was some more rustling, presumably as Todd dug through his coat. That thing had to have internal pockets, considering how many random little things Todd carried around on a regular basis.

“I suppose it is up to you how unpleasant it will be,” Todd told him, clearly still amused at John’s expense. “I have a light node with me, but if I use it, I will be unable to properly use my hands. As I am significantly stronger than you, this may limit us.”

“And if I use it?” John asked, looking at where he was pretty sure Todd was holding the thing. “I assume you wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t a possibility.”

Making that amused little rasping noise he always did when he was pleased at something, Todd rustled again as he moved closer. “Light nodes attach to the hand,” he said. “It is not particularly painful, but I understand humans find it unsettling. It does power off of your life force, but it requires very little to light up. Nothing a night’s sleep will not regenerate.”

“So my choice is between falling in potential holes or sticking weird Wraith tech to my hand,” John said, and sighed. Todd had some very good points. Wraith strength would be necessary to clear their way, and it wouldn’t be very easy while carrying something. Besides, John needed the light closer than Todd did. “Just … Just give me that thing before I change my mind.”

He held out his left hand. He might be willing to stick Wraith tech to himself, but he still wanted his dominant hand free.

Todd placed the node in his hand with surprising deftness. For a moment, it just felt like a strangely warm, palm-sized dome, and John was about to ask what to do next when there was a pricking of needles in his palm, sharp and sudden, and the node lit up with a warm amber glow.

“Huh,” John said, because he didn’t know how to explain the feeling of his nerves telling him the node was part of him now. “This better come off when we’re done here.”

“It will,” Todd promised, smiling to himself the way he often did around them, like he knew something they didn’t. “It may need my input, as they do not always recognize human mental commands, but worshippers use these light nodes frequently.”


	13. Chapter 13

The door was locked.

Of course the door was locked.

“McKay,” John said, scowling at the door as though it was to blame for all of this. It made a convenient target. “They’ve got the doors locked down.”

“Hang on,” Rodney said, sounding somewhat frantic even through the communicator. In the background, Zelenka was muttering in Czech. Whatever he was saying, it didn’t sound flattering.

Honestly, he should probably be impressed that this tech guy was good enough to play hide and seek with Rodney and Zelenka in the Atlantis systems, but at the moment, John was not feeling particularly charitable. He was in a lot of pain, he had a starving and pissed off Wraith to deal with, and some asshole was trying to take his city.

If he could manage it, he’d try incapacitating the tech guy instead of just shooting him. That was as charitable as he could manage at the moment.

“Right,” Rodney’s voice came through the communicator. “I’ve managed to isolate the section so they can’t access it, but it needs to be manually overridden.” He paused, then spoke again, more hesitantly. “Todd should be able to do the override, but if he’s –” Another pause. “Unavailable. I can probably talk you through it?”

Normally it wouldn’t be a problem, John knew. Todd knew Ancient technology as well as Rodney did – probably better. But at the moment?

He turned and looked at Todd. In the harsh light, it was all too obvious how badly starved he was, his skin dull and sunken, pulling back around the sensory pits. The look in his eyes, too, was not quite – Not dull, never that. If anything it was sharper.

Wraith. Sharp around the edges.

He made a point not to let his unease show and nodded to the door instead. “Can you get that open? McKay has cut them off from the controls, so if you can rewire-”

The door hissed open as Todd snarled, grabbing the access panel and ripping it from the wall.

“-Or you could do that, I suppose,” John said, watching the wires where the panel had been sparking helplessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is technically part of Ithaca, but given how often I rewrite that story, I'm not sure if I'm keeping it.


	14. Chapter 14

He’d never thought of any of their Wraith prisoners as tense, not really. There was such an inherent grace in them, because of course it was – Wraith didn’t have to deal with the little aches and twinges that piled up over the years – that it never seemed like they were tense. At least not tense in the sense of uncomfortable. Tense in the sense that they were a tightly wound coil ready to spring, certainly, but not from discomfort.

Having gotten to a point where he got to see a truly relaxed Wraith, however, John was rapidly realizing that so much of what they’d seen in Wraith was less about being smug and superior – though it was most certainly part of it – and more about conserving energy, because a locked up Wraith never knew when they’d get to replenish their stores.

In a situation where conservation of energy was no concern, Wraith moved from graceful in bursts to basically feline, happily using their strength and agility to a much greater extent than before.

Seeing the effortless way they scaled a wall to reach a high-up nook with no other access was only slightly diminished by the fact that there were currently three Wraith in said nook, crammed in like a pile of cats. John wasn’t sure if they were sleeping or just dozing lightly, but he wasn’t about to go test it. They were crammed in there so tightly that it was hard to say which Wraith was which, not at all helped by the fact that at a distance, it was hard to tell Wraith apart without seeing their tattoos. The two younger scientists were friendly enough, though he had no idea how well they took to being woken up. The older one – Well, he was already sort of sharp-edged when awake, and he had even longer claws than most. Better stay at a distance.

Not too far away, though.

John was curious by nature, had always been, but even someone normally uninterested in the world around them would find it hard to resist the urge to watch aliens being – Alien. Most people weren’t allowed in their space to the extent that John was, either, which made it even more of an opportunity.

Up in the impromptu nest, one of the Wraith shifted, a waterfall of white hair falling as he moved. The older scientist, then, mostly sandwiched between the younger, but larger, other scientists. He stretched, arms in the air as his entire body arched, and yawned. A full on yawn, lips parting to show rows of razor-sharp teeth.

A lot of teeth. More, perhaps, than a mouth that size should be able to hold, and all equally sharp and pointy.

The Wraith gave a low sound somewhere between a hiss and a chirp, and settled back down between his companions.

John shook his head, trying to not consider the rows of teeth too much.

Something told him he’d fail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ficlet inspired by yawning cats. Suddenly; teeth!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody likes Mondays

They wake up to darkness and closed doors. For whatever reason, the entire city seems to have gone into a mild form of shutdown overnight, leaving everyone trapped in their living quarters except the staff on duty during the night. It’s hardly an immediate threat; a city-wide announcement goes out to tell everyone how to override the door controls and soon enough, people return to their duties and the whole thing is mostly forgotten, except for the science team set to figure out what happened.

It’s Atlantis. This kind of thing happens. 

Normally on a much larger and much more potentially disastrous scale, so most of them are just relieved that the worst thing they had to deal with was sitting in the dark for a few hours longer than normal. A significant number of them probably spent the extra time napping, because just because they could get up bright and early on a Monday morning didn’t mean most of them enjoyed it. Compared to the sort of thing that usually goes wrong, a few extra hours to do nothing is very low on the scale.

It’s a scale where five through ten are all Wraith-related, depending on the proximity and number of Wraith.

There is still a lot of discussion about where friendly Wraith, as much as that can ever be said to be a thing, fit on the scale. Somehow, Wraith being oddly friendly is somehow more terrifying than Wraith trying to eat them.

This particular incident is not Wraith related, which automatically puts it low on the scale, and nobody is dead, dying, injured or turned into something else, which makes it a low-impact incident on all fronts.

By the time the evening shift rolls around, it has been largely delegated to something they joke about, like the time they accidentally discovered that the stained glass windows could change colours in the middle of a serious meeting with some allied dignitaries who did not expect colour-cycling pink and neon green windows, or the incident with the bubbles.

Maybe not the incident with the bubbles. They still don’t talk about the incident with the bubbles.

It’s not until the day is nearly over that they get an answer, and the answer they get is – Well, it’s an entirely Atlantis answer.

“Let me get this straight, ” Woolsey says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You’re telling me that program filtering redundant coding accidentally activated an old Ancient program made to sabotage Mondays?”

When the two scientists from the team working on it say nothing, just look at him with resigned looks, he shakes his head slowly.

“Right. Of course it did. File it as a code 89-A-5 and make sure the program is removed.”


	16. Chapter 16

“Hey Todd,” John said, dropping gracelessly down into the chair opposite the Wraith. “Want to contribute to science for a bit?”

Todd looked up from his tablet, giving that slight, bird-like tilt of his head that John had learned to identify as the Wraith equivalent of a raised eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”

Grinning, John nodded to the crate he had brought along. “So the scientists are as bored as we are, and they wanted me to test your reaction to some Earth foods.” He rummaged around. “Some of these are pretty weird, but whatever. Not like either of us have better things to do.”

Putting his tablet aside, Todd grinned. “It sounds more appealing than what I was doing.”

“Eating strange things our weird scientists came up with sounds more appealing?” John asked, looking at the tablet. “I’m not sure if I want to know what you were doing.”

“I was recalibrating the logarithms for the hive ship humidifiers to account for lower gravity fields,” Todd told him, still grinning.

John snorted. “I don’t want to know. Have a…” He rummaged again and pulled out something on random. “A hairy fruit thing.”

It was an Earth fruit, he knew that much, but he’d never actually seen one before. “I actually have no idea what this is or how to eat it, but I imagine you don’t want to eat the outside.”

Taking the reddish fruit from John, Todd looked at it. It wasn’t very big, and it was easily dwarfed by the size of the Wraith’s hands. “It looks like something that would stick to someone’s hair,” he pointed out. “The smell is not unpleasant, though.”

It did sort of look like a giant burr. John couldn’t say he’d noticed any smell, but most his senses were far less acute than Todd’s, so he was going to believe the Wraith.

“Everything sticks in your hair,” he pointed out, looking at Todd handling the weird fruit. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lost civilisation in there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fruit is a rambutan, and they will absolutely stick in your hair.


	17. Chapter 17

It was all McKay’s fault, really.

They’d all been hanging out down in the lab, waiting for a new subroutine to finish its trial run and try finding a harmless but intricate piece of Wraith code that they’d made Todd create for them, to help them find actual Wraith viruses and malware easier when they needed to, and John had been leaning against Rodney’s desk not really paying attention and considering nothing much. Everything had been smooth running until Rodney had looked over to where Todd and Teyla was clearly having a very involved telepathic conversation on the other side of the room and frowned.

“Do you think he’s into her?” He’d asked, gesturing towards the two. “He’s always talking to her a lot, and he let her be his queen that one time. That’d be strange, though.” Rodney had blinked then, as his mind caught up with his words. “Not that someone would be into Teyla, I mean. Teyla is awesome and totally gorgeous and being into her isn’t weird at all. Except that she’s kind of like my sister, but not, so weird but not, you know?”

John had just given him a blank look. He was used to Rodney’s ranting, and he was absolutely right about Teyla. Teyla was awesome.

“It’s the Wraith thing that makes it weird,” Rodney had continued, unfazed by John’s look.

The Wraith thing made most things weird, in John’s opinion. Especially when it came to Todd, who was weird in Wraithy ways, but also in ways that was just Todd. He was pretty sure most Wraith found Todd pretty weird, too.

He was also pretty sure Todd liked it that way.

Rodney had frowned again and looked up at John, speaking the words that had started this whole thing.

“I mean, they’re technically part bug. Do they even have … You know, the bits?”

He’d followed that up with some gesturing John could have lived happily without ever seeing.

“McKay,” John had said, trying very hard to push what Rodney had just implied as far from his conscious mind as he could. “I think you should keep in mind that whatever else Wraith have, they have very good hearing and they read minds. Please don’t ever bring that up again. Ever. I’d rather not have to bleach my brain.”

Looking kind of pale at the implications, Rodney had turned back to his screen and tried very hard not to look in Todd’s direction for the rest of the day.

That should have been all there was to it, but things were never that simple.

Ever since they’d had that unfortunate discussion, John had been unable to push the thoughts from his mind. It was like trying not to think of elephants, except instead of elephants it was a lot more - green.

It wasn’t even something he could just look up, because the database had a lot of data about Wraith in pretty much every context, but not on the specifics of that particular area. The anatomy, sure, but it was anatomy as it was found in dead Wraith, dead Wraith who had typically died traumatically. It didn’t really cover how they might function when they were “in the mood”. The data they’d gathered had been focused on how to kill them as fast as possible, not on the birds and the, well, Iratus bugs.

Even so, John did end up reading the entire database on Wraith physiology and he was pretty he’d have been better off not knowing most of these things. Mostly because it was all – Not technobabble, but whatever the medical version of it was. Filled with enough Latin that someone who spoke only Ancient could probably have read all of it. It was full of sentences like “partially impervious dermis” and “unilateral organ for intake of sustenance”. Why they couldn’t just write that Wraith skin was hard to damage and they had a single hand-mouth, John would never understand.

The database wasn’t really helpful, everything considered. He walked away knowing way more about Wraith anatomy than he’d known going in, but it was mostly unrelated to what he’d been reluctantly wondering about. Mostly. Apparently Wraith weren’t mammals, though they had some mammalian traits. They didn’t have nipples, though, which was weird to think about. Nipples were one of those things he never really considered outside of very specific circumstances, but the thought of not having any was weird. No bellybuttons, either, which made sense if they weren’t true mammals.

He wondered if that meant that Wraith laid eggs. They obviously had more or less humanoid children, as Ellia had proved, but it was entirely possible that they had a larval stage or something. Wraithepillars.

Yep. The damn topic had definitely done some serious damage to his brain. Even if the mental image of tiny Wraith inching around like worms was hilarious.

It still didn’t answer his actual question, though.

He supposed that if Wraith weren’t mammalian, despite the human part of their DNA, that made them bugs. Obviously, they weren’t arthropods, technically, since he was pretty sure that insects were all invertebrates, but they were still kind of – Buggy, he supposed. Insects doing human mimicry, like how some harmless insects looked like spiders and wasps. Or more accurately, like how some spiders and mantises looked like flowers.

Not that spiders were insects, as such, but eh. Close enough to be considered, especially since they, too, fed by filling their prey with enzymes and sucking the deliciousness out. If by delicious you meant fly slurry, which was probably lovely to a spider.

Bugs and spiders had fascinated him as kid. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

The books he’d read as a kid had never mentioned how bugs made more little bugs, though, and reading through that stuff, he was really glad they hadn’t. He’d have had nightmares. He still might, especially after seeing some of those pictures.

Nothing justified spiked dicks. Nothing.

Not even the way some bugs killed their partners during sex. He didn’t think Wraith did that. At least not always, because he was pretty sure Todd had fathered offspring at some point.

Insect porn was more like a slasher horror than anything, John was starting to realise. If it wasn’t actual sexual cannibalism, it involved spiky genitals or stabbing each other with them and inseminating the abdomen. Clasps was apparently a thing, too, holding the female in place. There were people doing research about how, apparently, the male mantises had different genital variations in the same species. All pointy, though.

Maybe John was old fashioned, but he was pretty sure the words “pointy”, “spike” or “blade” should never be used to describe anyone’s genitals. Ever.

He was regretting this whole venture now. It hadn’t helped in the least; he had no answers, only more questions, and he was never going to be able to look Todd in the eyes again.

Not that he generally did that. Todd had a way of looking right through him that was unsettling at best, and the last thing he needed when he couldn’t get images out of his head. As he’d pointed out to Rodney earlier, Wraith were mind-readers. They were still on the fence about just how much it was Wraith could read from their minds, but John really didn’t want to take chances. Not with the safety of the city, and not with his mind full of mental images he was going to have nightmares about, if for very different reasons.

One was an actual danger to the expedition. The other was simply mortifying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insect genitals are the stuff of nightmares. 
> 
> I don't think I'll ever finish this fic, so up here it goes.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know what people are like. There's no way there's not a secret porn stash on the Atlantis servers. And if it's on the servers and they let Todd on there, there was no way he wasn't going to find it. 
> 
> I guess this sort of follows the same tone as the previous one?

They had restricted Todd's access to the vital parts of their database.

At least they theoretically had; John had no illusions about Todd's ability to break every one of those security measures if he actually wanted to. Truthfully, he was pretty sure Todd already knew most of their secrets, anyway, up to and including the location of Earth. He just wasn't particularly interested in Earth. At least not unless he had to hold it over their heads at some point. 

But Woolsey had insisted on it, so Rodney and his team had put up what was no doubt some really impressive security.

What they had not thought of restricting, however, was the rest of the database. Most of that was just pure academic information, some of which Todd already knew and some of which was more or less harmless. If Todd wanted to read about medieval history, that wasn't really going to affect anything else. They had a lot of encyclopaedia-based information in the database, both from Earth, from the planets in the Milky Way, and from the planets of the Pegasus galaxy. The scientists had informally dubbed it the Gatepedia, and it was vast and occasionally incoherent, but not really anything considered secret. 

Not that John put it past Todd to be able to weaponize any knowledge if he felt the need to do so, but he didn't think the sort of knowledge found in the database would be the first choice in that situation. 

Todd was a bit of a knowledge sponge, really. He seemed to just genuinely enjoy digging around the database until a topic caught his eye, and then reading everything related to it. It was far better than letting him go bored. A bored Wraith was a dangerous Wraith. A bored Todd was even more dangerous.

As well as the general database, there was the user generated data. Originally meant for easy access to mission rapports and important announcements, the user web had grown exponentially and was now filled with discussion forums, shared recipes, a trading and bartering forum, information about various group activities in the city, a database of interesting locations people had found around the city worth going to see – It was a bit of a free-for-all, but in all its chaos, it was a helpful tool for the city, and so they kept it. 

John hadn't even known about half the activities going on around the city without the user web. He had to approve any that had security concerns or involved military resources, but the strictly casual ones were not on his radar normally. There was no real reason why a military commander needed to know about things like the Atlantis stitch and bitch, the book club, the fact that there was a hair salon set up in the city, or the unofficial Atlantis choir. The only reason he knew about the allotment garden was that they actually produced food that was being served in the mess. 

The user web was also where peoples shared their digital goods. There was folders for sharing music, films, books, games – most of them weren't strictly legal, of course, but John was fine looking the other way. Their relative isolation made it hard for people to access these things in any other way, and it helped keeping people happy and entertained. 

And then there was the porn. 

John had known about the porn, but he'd never really looked it up. Plausible deniability, and all that. He knew that whoever curated that particular folder took great care to keep out anything actually illegal, and that was really all he needed to know. He certainly didn't need to know what his military were looking at in their free time. The logistic nightmares that would involve had made him stay as far away from the porn as he could. 

Nobody had thought to restrict the porn, though. They had no minors on Atlantis – Except Torren, who wasn't old enough to find it nor understand it – so it was just there, sort of hidden in a corner and not talked about. 

Unrestricted porn and a very curious Wraith was not a good combination. 

Normally, when Todd came across something in the database that he was curious about, it was mostly because he lacked cultural context, and John didn't really mind explaining things to him. Todd was a remarkably good listener, and he learned fast. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this scenario, though. 

He didn't particularly want to look at the screen, because – Well. Because. But he didn't want to look at Todd at the moment, either, because he was pretty sure he'd lose it.

Instead, he looked at the wall in the distance, which was nice and dull and had nothing at all going on. 

"Please don't tell me I need to explain the birds and the bees to you," he muttered, wondering how this was his life. "You're old as dirt. Surely you know-" 

The sound Todd made was decidedly amused. "I am well aware of the concept, yes," he said. 

Even without looking at him, John could tell the damn Wraith was laughing at him. 

"I was simply unaware that humans had recordings of it," Todd continued. "A lot of recordings."

John groaned. Where was an invading hive ship when he needed one?

"Are you telling me that Wraith don't have anything like-" He waved his hand in the general direction of the screen, still refusing to look at it. "Like that?"

Given that pretty much every human culture had created some sort of erotic art, it seemed almost odd to consider that Wraith might not. Then again, he knew very little about Wraith culture, other than what Todd had mentioned.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are so many funny idioms and expressions in English. And in every other language, for that matter, but given that the Atlantis Expedition use English, we'll stick to those without having me mutter about owls in the moss or pigs in the woods. 
> 
> I mentioned the expression "looking green" for illness in one of the ItH stories. I really want to work in "breaking out in hives" in a fic sometime. It seems appropriate. 
> 
> Don't bite Wraith. They'll take it as an invitation.

"OK," John said, looking at Mistwhisper and his honestly sort of ridiculous curtain of hair. "I'll bite."

Mistwhisper cocked his head, his hair falling around him like a silk curtain. "You will bite?" He asked, clearly amused. 

"It's an expression," John told him, not needing him to get ideas. "It means I'm going to ask an obvious question. I have no intent of biting any Wraith. You'd kill me. Or bite back, which is frankly a horrifying thought."

The scientist made an amused noise. Clearly, he found humans ridiculous. 

"Look," John said. "I'm stuck here with you until Todd sorts this stuff out, and I feel like a mess, and clearly you lot have some way of staying clean around here." 

Getting stuck on a research outpost full of Wraith was bad in itself. The fact that this was one of Michael's old facilities that Todd had tracked down and taken over did nothing to make that less creepy. Admittedly, the Wraith were being pretty well behaved, which was a nice change, but he was still stuck with far too many Wraith because the space gate orbiting the world had decided to go down. They were too far away from anything to send a jumper, and neither the Daedalus nor Todd's hive ship were anywhere near. Todd had sent for his ship, but they had a while to go yet before John got freed of his suddenly Wraith-filled existence. 

The chance to actually get a proper bath would at least help his mood. He'd been washing off with a basin and towel, which worked, but it wasn't the same. 

"You could do with a bath, yes," Mistwhisper agreed, looking at him.

John was not particularly concerned about his appearance, most of the time. He had good hygiene when he wasn't stuck in research outposts with a bunch of creepy Wraith, and he was aware that he was generally considered an attractive man. It was hard not to feel unpolished around Mistwhisper, however, who was more or less elegance made flesh. Wraith were graceful by nature anyway, but Mistwhisper made it an art.

"I will show you," Mistwhisper said, smiling at him in that "indulging a small child or pet" way. "No biting required." 

He'd deserve being bitten, honestly. John had some rather uncharitable thoughts about Mistwhisper's parentage that he hoped the Wraith couldn't pull out of his head. 

Not at least because he was pretty sure Mistwhisper was closely related to Todd, somehow. They certainly had the same weird sense of humour. 

Mistwhisper led him through one of the many tunnels seemingly at random. Maybe they looked different to Wraith, but to John, whose senses weren't as sharp, all these tunnels looked much the same. This one had a light breeze, though, which made sense as they emerged into fresh air a decent distance from the outpost.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I try to write this fic for the holiday season each year. I still haven't managed to do so. Maybe I'll have it done for the holidays 2019? Who knows. Consider this a possible preview. Or just some silliness.

"Why is there shrubbery in the doorway?" 

Todd's sudden appearance at his side didn't startle John as much as it would have a year or so ago, but it still made him jump a little. Not so much because he was startled as because he was still amazed at how silently a Wraith could move if they put their mind to it. 

Normally, Wraith didn't go for stealth. They didn't need to. Being the biggest and scariest thing in the galaxy had its advantages. Todd's hive was just full of sneaky bastards, none of which were more so than their commander.

Besides, Todd liked playing tricks on them.

"It's an Earth tradition," John explained. "There is this plant we hang in doorways, and people that step under it are supposed to kiss. Don't ask me why. Just tradition." 

"I assume you have substituted your normal plant?" Todd asked, looking at the doorway with that expression of hidden amusement he so often wore around them. 

Shrugging, John sipped at his glass of mulled apple juice. Not quite as effective as the alcoholic version, but there were plenty of reasons to keep the festivities sober. One of them was standing next to him. "Couldn't find mistletoe in this galaxy," he said. "The botanists just found something that looked right. Why?"

"Selirin is a particularly potent neurotoxin. I believe they use it to fight creatures much like your grizzly bears." Todd sounded far too amused by the presence of the plant. 

"How the hell do you know what a grizzly bear is, anyway?" John demanded. The things Todd knew and didn't knew of Earth was utterly random and never seemed to make sense, though John was sure there was actually a pattern there somewhere. It might not make sense to anyone who wasn't Todd, though. 

The Wraith did not answer, though it seemed less deliberate and more because his attention was elsewhere, watching one of John's lieutenants stepping under the not-mistletoe at the side of a pretty nurse, the people around immediately demanding they kiss. The lieutenant seemed a little taken a back, but the nurse leaned up and planted a small kiss on her lips, then hurried away with a blush on her face, leaving the lieutenant touching her lips and looking thoughtful. 

Cute, John noted, and looked back to Todd, who seemed – puzzled, perhaps. 

Come to think of it – 

"Do Wraith kiss?" John asked him, genuinely curious. It wasn't something that came up normally, whether fighting Wraith or working with them. 

"Sometimes," Todd agreed. "It is not a Wraith custom, but we are aware of the gesture, and many enjoy it. Generally not beneath shrubbery, however." 

"Technically, a shrubbery grows on the ground," John told him. "Those things grow on branches." Like mistletoe, hence the substitution. 

Todd chuckled. "My apologies," he said. "Botany was never my field of interest." 

But grizzly bears were, apparently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, hell yeah, random cute queer ladies in the background. 
> 
> No, I have no idea how Todd knows what a grizzly bear is. He's not telling.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't use Tumblr any more, but if you want to poke me, I'm on Twitter as Ashkaztra, and also on Dreamwidth and Pillowfort.


End file.
